The company of elderly worldlings sat abashed in the sudden white-hot flame of the little creature, who knew nothing yet of life except that she scorned to find it sweet if she could not keep her integrity of spirit.
They could only answer her by giving assurance of that life. Queen Mary, it was now generally known, had resolved there should be no more executions than those of Duke Dudley, Sir John Gates and Sir Thomas Palmer. Jane’s father had not only been granted his life but all his property, and let off his fine of twenty thousand pounds in reward for his conversion. He and his wife had already been set at liberty, and it was Mary’s firm intention that Jane should be too, though she had had to give her counsellors assurance that she would take all proper precautions first against any further outbreaks of rebellion. Bridges told Jane this in frank amazement, for Mary’s advisers, even including those who had so recently been Jane’s own supporters, were all urging that her innocence was beside the point, but that the safety of the Kingdom depended on the death of the rival who had been actually proclaimed Queen.
Jane listened, looking straight in front of her, but seeing only her own study at Bradgate in the green shadowed light from the great trees, and Mr Aylmer putting her books for that morning’s work upon the table; hearing the deep hush fill the room that would be broken only by their two voices when they read aloud; a quiet eternity that would be interrupted only by the next meal.
She would be going back to that, after all.
Mary was a Papist, but she had been good to her. She said, ‘I beseech God the Queen may long continue. She is a merciful Princess.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Item. A large leather box marked with King Henry VIII’s broad arrow, containing two old shaving cloths and thirteen pairs of old leather gloves, some of them worn.
Item. A fish of gold, being a toothpick.
Item. Three old halfpence in silver, seven little halfpence and farthings.
Item. Three books, a girdle of gold thread, and a pair of silver tweezers.
Item. Sixteen pence, two farthings and two halfpence. Three French crowns, one broken in two.
Item. A little square box with divers shreds of satin. A piece of paper containing a pattern of white taffeta.
Item. – Mary stopped writing with a start, as she felt her half-sister’s eyes upon her.
Elizabeth must have entered the room a few minutes ago. How silently she moved, just like a cat – but Mary could hardly blame her for coming so promptly when summoned, nor yet for keeping quiet while the Queen was writing. So her annoyed exclamation had to be transferred to something else, and she went on quickly, ‘I cannot understand it. Lord Winchester says he put all the Crown jewels into Jane’s hands on the 12th of July, together with various other articles belonging to the Crown, and that some of them are now missing. He actually hints that Jane must have sold them.’
‘Even our father’s old shaving cloths?’ asked Elizabeth demurely.
Short-sighted herself, Mary had had no idea that her big square handwriting was clearly legible at the distance where Elizabeth stood.
‘That is merely to identify the box,’ she explained hastily. ‘But it is not a question of the value of the goods—’
‘No?’ asked Elizabeth, glancing down at the list of halfpence and farthings.
‘But it is the principle of the thing that matters. These things are Crown property, delivered to Jane as the pretended inheritor of the Crown. I should have thought she would have been careful to guard and restore them.’
And she went on saying what she thought Jane should have done, while Elizabeth forced back her look of amazement. How could Mary, who was so generous and used to give away nearly all her beggarly dress allowance, sit poring over lists of rubbish like any cracked old cottage woman counting her broken treasures? Where could she get it from? A horrid thought flashed upon her, their grandfather, Henry VII, had started life as a splendid adventurer and ended it as a miser. Could it ever be that she, Elizabeth herself—?
She brushed it away and spoke hastily, putting all the trouble down to Winchester, ‘I’ll swear that old vulture’s hooded eyes never lost sight of anything he handed over – or didn’t hand over. Depend on it, Madam, he stuffed the shaving cloths into his own basin.’
Even as she said it she wished she hadn’t. Mary was peering sharply at her. She used rather to enjoy being teased; but that had been when she was glad of any attention that was not a threat or a snub. Had power changed her already?
Elizabeth immediately looked sympathetic, and murmured that it was indeed tiresome of Jane and/or Winchester, and then with a swift stroke of what she felt to be genius she pointed to the item of the pattern and said, ‘Surely I remember that white taffeta. Wasn’t it a dress that our father liked you to wear?’
‘It was,’ said Mary discouragingly, for she remembered other things about it; how she had written to King Henry asking if she might leave off mourning for the latest wife he had beheaded, young Catherine Howard (a badly brought up girl whom Mary had never liked); on his somewhat ungracious message, that she could wear whatever colour she liked, she had ventured to write again demanding whether he would like her to wear that same white taffeta edged with velvet ‘which used to be to his own liking whenever he saw it.’ And to that tentative filial request he had sent no answer whatever.
‘Why do we talk of such toys?’ she demanded in the harsh deep voice that so surprisingly recalled him. ‘No doubt you’d like to see his jewels that I have now inherited, yes, even those robbed from the tomb of the Blessed Martyr Saint Thomas à Becket, his tomb, that was the glory of Christendom, rifled to make thumb-rings and necklaces for the King – and Queen – of England. Look!’ She pushed a tray of enormous rubies and emeralds set in antique gold towards her sister. ‘Saint Louis, King of France, sent this great ruby to the English Saint’s tomb before he went crusading with the Coeur de Lion, more than three hundred years ago. Your mother wore it on her Parisian black dresses. Would you like to wear it, sister, the “Regale de France”, on those delicate fingers that you are so anxious the world shall notice?’
Elizabeth flushed scarlet. ‘I care nothing for such gauds,’ she cried, turning away her head. ‘When have you ever seen me for years past wear jewels or bright colours or even do my hair as—’
‘As you would like, sister?’
‘As you would like, Madam, is all that matters now. Do you like my style of hairdressing?’
‘No. I don’t.’ said Mary bluntly. ‘The Scriptures tell us that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory, and I see no point in stuffing it all under a net or cap as you do – except when, by some strange accident, it flies out into a flaming aureole as on our entry into London.’
Elizabeth murmured something about the wind, and that stupid Ashley.
‘As you will,’ Mary said abruptly. ‘But I sent for you on matters more important. You have said you need instruction before entering the true Church, you ask for books, as though religion were an intellectual exercise. But what of your conscience and your soul? Are you playing at conversion out of policy? Why did you not accompany me to Mass last Sunday?’
‘I had a stomach-ache,’ said Elizabeth simply, but added wickedly, ‘like Erasmus, who refused fish on Fridays, saying, “my heart is Catholic, but my stomach is Protestant”.’
Mary, as an admirer of Erasmus, had to smile, and answered almost indulgently, ‘You were always of a high stomach.’ But she was eyeing her intently, seeing her again as the baby not yet four, who had asked indignantly how it was that she had been called the Lady Princess last week but now only the Lady Elizabeth. ‘There’s early showing of a high and haughty stomach!’ the Court had murmured in amusement, but Mary, despite her grim satisfaction, had only felt sorry for the child who did not know that she had been bastardised in the past week.
She did not feel sorry now. Elizabeth needed reminding. She set about it.
‘My first Act of Parliament will, of course, be to reinstate my m
other as the lawfully wedded wife of King Henry, and myself therefore as his only surviving legitimate child. Is that plain?’
‘Your Grace could not be plainer.’
‘Have you any objection to make? You look as though you have.’
‘What objection could I make? I had a mother – as Your Grace has had. She was done to death – more violently and publicly than yours. I do not remember her as you, Madam, have the good fortune to remember your more worthy – your sainted mother. I can have no public reason to object; but at least you may give me leave to regret in private the slur cast upon my mother’s memory.’
It touched Mary on a tender spot. ‘It is true,’ she said almost apologetically, ‘we cannot both be legitimate.’
‘But, Madam, we can – if only it is not defined too closely and caged down in words. Think how wise our father was! He came to know he was mistaken to declare either or both of us illegitimate. But did he ever revoke what he had said and so admit that be had been mistaken? No, he let the past go, and merely replaced us both in the Succession after his son and heir King Edward, you as the elder, I the younger, without opening up again any question as to the which of us was born legitimate. You of all people will not question our father’s wisdom when – when his passions did not lead him astray.’
Mary hesitated, hated it – it was compromise, casuistry, no clear-cut definition between right and wrong, but just the sheer Machiavellian doctrine of expediency. But there was no question but that it was what her father had said, and what he said was always right except in those cases at which Elizabeth had so tactfully hinted, above all the case of Nan Bullen.
But at the thought of Nan, something in Mary that she could not control rose up and cried aloud to be revenged upon her daughter. She heard it cry, not in her own voice but one strained and wild as a lost soul – ‘You think then to be declared as our heir, my Lady Elizabeth? Are you so sure I shall not be able to provide a better? Yet women older than I have married and borne children. I am not yet thirty-eight, though that must indeed seem withered to one who is not yet twenty.’
‘Madam, I—’ all the colour had drained away from Elizabeth’s face. She who was so clever, who thought out everything, had not thought of this. For so many years now, she and all her entourage had considered Mary a confirmed old maid. ‘Madam, I – forgive me for being so silly as to have left out the thought of marriage at the moment. It is only because I never think of it for myself—’
‘No?’ asked Mary drily.
‘No, Madam. I have had small reason to do so these past four and a half years.’
Mary suddenly felt ashamed of baiting her. How was it she was always at her worst with Elizabeth?
‘Well,’ she said, uncomfortably trying to ease her way on to a more gracious and friendly footing, ‘I can assure you I have not thought of it either, but now all my councillors seem determined that I ought to marry. The trouble is, they all offer me young men of about half my age. Their favourite is Edward Courtenay at twenty-four, so as to bring back the last drop of Plantagenet blood into the Succession. No, Bishop Gardiner has another reason; he has grown so fond of the poor unjustly treated lad in the Tower that he actually cried when I thought the match unsuitable. He looks on him as his own son – Courtenay has always called him “Father”.’
‘But that’s no reason for you to make Courtenay one!’
Was Mary shocked? But luckily she did not seem to have heard – or perhaps not even understood. She was peering at Elizabeth with more than her usual short-sighted intentness. What was she trying to see? Suddenly the question was shot at her – ‘And what do you think of him, sister?’
She answered quickly, lightly, ‘As you do, Madam, a handsome lad but scarcely suitable.’
‘For me. But he is five years older than you. I have seen the way he looks at you. And I have heard him say,’ she added with an unexpectedly malicious smile, ‘that if you were not a Court lady you would make a charming courtesan.’
‘That hardly sounds like matrimonial intentions,’ said Elizabeth calmly.
Her shot having failed, Mary was quickly ashamed of it. ‘He did not intend an insult. He is utterly ignorant of the world.’
‘He seems to be improving his knowledge rapidly.’
‘The poor lad is at a disadvantage. He is eager to take his natural lead at Court, and he has learnt accomplishments in the Tower, but knows nothing of sport. He cannot even shoot with the long-bow—’
‘He can draw it, though!’ muttered Elizabeth.
‘—and he has never ridden since he was a small boy. How he must envy all the other young men at Court caracoling on their great horses!’
She must be in love with him after all; – or was she thinking of her own bad horsemanship, due to her neglected girlhood?
The cynical young sister decided that the sympathies of women were apt to be a mirror to their self-pity. But she bit back any disparagements of Courtenay; Mary might take a fancy to him and would then remember them against her. There was an agitated silence while she rejected all the things that she might say. Better not. Too emphatic. Would only make her more suspicious. Wait till she speaks next.
But Mary seemed to be waiting for her to speak – and not about Courtenay. In a flash Elizabeth saw that she had forgotten him, that her mood was no longer dangerous but shy and eager, like a young girl who wanted to be asked about her lovers. But the indiscretion must come from Elizabeth. So she mentioned other possible suitors.
Mary looked wooden.
Elizabeth then remarked casually that doubtless the Emperor would welcome a match with his son. Mary instantly reacted, half turned away her head and blurted out gruffly, ‘But then he too is much too young for me – and so I kept telling Signor Renard. Only a year or two older than Courtenay.’
So the Imperial ambassador was already pushing it! Elizabeth felt cold with anxiety but had to reassure her. ‘That is quite different – he has had so much experience,’ (perhaps that was a mistake!), ‘so much power. Why, he is the greatest Prince in Christendom.’
‘That is what my mother always said of his father, the Emperor,’ said Mary happily.
Her shining eyes encouraged Elizabeth to a wicked reminder.
‘Wasn’t there a plan when I was a small child to marry you to the Emperor and me to Prince Philip?’
It worked. Mary laughed with her. ‘But it came to nothing as usual. Why?’
‘Because we’d both been declared bastards,’ Elizabeth reminded her, ‘and when the Emperor demanded our reinstatement, our father would not unsay what he had said.’
To Cat Ashley twenty minutes later she was raging – ‘She is mad, I tell you, mad! One moment she is laughing with me as though we were two milkmaids on the village green – and then I catch her peering at me as though she’s seeing, not me, but some dreadful thing of long ago that has never escaped her mind. Oh to run away from her endless “friendly arguments”, her probing, nagging attempts to get at my conscience! God, how I hate all women! I know, I know, all my stepmothers were very kind to me – and my mother was a hateful stepmother to Mary. Well, my mother hated women and so do I. Once I’m free, I’ll have only men friends.’
‘And plenty,’ murmured Mrs Ashley.
‘The time I’ve had to spend making friends with women – all those kind stepmothers – how I’ve had to truckle to them, curtsied – bobbed – cast down my eyes when spoken to – wrote ’em letters in Latin, in Greek, in French, in Italian, all full of fine moral sentiments and dutiful affection – made ’em little presents at Christmas, pricking my fingers to the bone embroidering those damned violet leaves on the “Mirror of a Guilty Soul” – and could any soul be guilty of a more colossal piece of dullness than that interminable poem I translated – at ten years old – to show off to my last stepmother?’
‘Poor Catherine Parr!’ sighed the governess. ‘But Your Grace was devoted to her. That showed true love between women.’
‘True, till a man came be
tween!’
She brooded, bit her fingernails, then pulled them away, remembering it would spoil their shape. ‘Jealousy – the curse of all women’s love. Women cannot love, they can only clutch, grasp, hang on till love turns sour. They choke, they smother and say it’s maternal – “I’m a mother myself,” said the sow when she sat on the eggs. They break in, they try to violate your secrets, they demand windows to peer and pry into the soul. Mary will do that with her husband, she will do it with her country. She loves her mother, who was a saint and a Spaniard, and so was her grandmother, whose reign was a crusade against the infidel. So Mary’s reign will be a crusade – against England.’
Her eyes narrowed as she stared into the future. She added darkly, ‘The virtues of the mothers are visited on their children, even unto the third and fourth generation.’
‘Her grandmother?’ repeated Ashley comfortably, without raising her eyes from the seed pearls she was busy sewing on to a bodice Elizabeth had given her, to cover a rent in it. (Her Grace was a bit on the mean side in her presents of clothes.) ‘Wasn’t that Isabella the Catholic who vowed not to change her linen till the siege of Granada was raised?’
‘Just so, dear Cat, which is why we have the colour “Isabella brown”.’
‘Well, Her Majesty won’t take after her in that. Such a fuss and to-do as there is now over her wardrobes! I am sick to death of hearing of all her Coronation clothes – first the blue velvet and ermine (may she sweat in it, that’s all, if it’s as hot as now!), and then her crimson Parliament robes, and then her cloth of gold and skirts furred with miniver – the bellies only, mind you. What is Your Grace doing to keep up with all this?’ (There might be some better pickings if Elizabeth had an entire new wardrobe.)
‘I?’ said Elizabeth with elaborate indifference. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter what I wear, as she has all but promised to cut me out of the Succession. I shall just wear a simple little white dress as usual.’
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